Sun, 05 Sep 2004

We've been reading for two days now the story of how LAX (one
of the nation's busiest airports) was closed down for several hours
after a flashlight exploded while it was being examined by a
security screener.

I'm still waiting for details. Doesn't this story seem a bit odd?
Isn't it fairly unusual for flashlights to explode?
Wouldn't you think some reporter, while writing up this story,
might think that readers might wonder whether their flashlights
were at risk of blowing up, and might want to report on what
specific circumstances caused this incident and how to avoid it?

The SF
Chron story has the most detail I've seen so far, which still
isn't much:

The Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad examined the flashlight
and determined the explosion occurred because the batteries inside
had eroded.

That still leaves me wondering: what sort of battery, and how big?
How badly eroded? Is this something we should be checking for in
our flashlights? What was the screener doing with the flashlight
which caused it to explode right then?

A web search on "flashlight batteries explosion" doesn't turn up
much more information. There are lots of pages warning against
trying to recharge regular (non-rechargeable) alkaline batteries
since they explode. We know lithium-ion and lithium-polymer
batteries can explode, but I've never seen a flashlight which
uses them.

I did find one NIOSH Fact Sheet
called "EXPLODING FLASHLIGHTS:
ARE THEY A SERIOUS THREAT TO WORKER SAFETY?", which mentions
hydrogen gas being produced in zinc/carbon batteries and alkaline
batteries as the zinc electrode corrodes in the aqueous electrolyte,
and that it's more likely to happen if batteries of different types,
brands, or ages are mixed.

Still seems strange that it doesn't seem to have occurred to any
of the reporters covering the LAX incident to ask about this and
find out what happened in this particular case. I wonder -- is
this another "fox terrier", where someone writes an initial story
and everyone else just paraphrases it without adding anything?
Certainly the new stories coming out don't seem to add anything
to the initial report yesterday morning.
Do reporters not ask questions any more, and journalism schools
merely instruct on different ways of re-wording a press release?

(Stephen Gould wrote about wondering why so many books mentioned
that Eophippus, the "dawn horse", was the size of a fox terrier.
Why that specific breed? Upon investigation, he was able to trace
the origins of the comparison, and show that successive authors
merely repeated the assertion verbatim. Unfortunately, the syndrome
works just as effectively in cases of missing or incorrect
information, as long as authors are willing to repeat stories
without checking them.)